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– News about Quincy Massachusetts from Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.
Quincy Quarry News Photo Recon Team Six in action
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Quincy Quarry News Financial and Other Affairs desk broke out its tactical gear to slog through Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s proposed Fiscal Year 2024 budget and which he presented to the Quincy City Council earlier this week.
Few annual events are a bigger slog through bovine byproduct for Quincy Quarry News personnel than wading through the manure promulgated via Mayor Koch’s annual budgets.
Even worse, this proposed budget proposes a record breaking going away spending increase.
How big an increase?
A 9,8% increase from last year’s final adjusted authorized budget appropriations total of $369.6 million.
Mayor Koch has conversetly claimed “only” an 8.9% increase from Fiscal Year 2023 spending.
Fool on a stool …
A file photo
A “small” problem; however: he “forgot” to factor in a $3 million trimming of what was a fat budgeted Fiscal Year 2023 Health Insurance budget line so that he could head off an additional $75 increase on the average local homeowners’ property tax bill while having concurrently tapped almost $20 million in various now all but empty city reserve funds so as to head off a further $500 increase on the average homeowner’s owner’s tax bill.
In any event, earlier this week Mayor Koch has made much of how new union contracts have fueled the spending increase.
So what for the fact that the union contract raises only run 3% this year as well as union member wages only costs only run no more than roughly 20% of the mayor’s total spending increase ask for Fiscal Year 2024 whereas increased debt service expense arising from Mayor Koch’s massive borrowing habit is running twice as much.
Then again, Mayor Koch is said to have been at best a C student at North Quincy High School and is a Quincy Junior College dropout, not to mention that his time in office as mayor has confirmed that math is not something with which he is all that familiar.
Killing trees, taxpayers – whatever.
A Tobe Hooper image
In turn, this year’s proposed just short of four hundred page budget sets a new low for killing trees.
For example roughly forty percent of the Fiscal Year 2024 budget budget book featured year to date actually spending data.
So what for the fact Fiscal Year 2023 had nearly seven weeks yet to go when these data were tabulated and thus are at best approximations of what actual year spending will be.end up running by year end.
Even worse, the Fiscal Year 2023 actual spendings to date provided are not tabulated in the same fashion as is the budget and thus further even less useful.
Further worse, Fiscal Year 2022 actual spending data are nowhere to be seen even though such should be noted per standard operating procedure when presenting such a consequential budget.
Then again, actual spending data will only confirm that city spending is variously koched-up to a fair thee well.
Koch blithely noted: “And I know it sounds a little bit snarky to say ‘we could tax you more,’ but we could.”
Snarky? No. It sounds like a threat coming from the Lord Mayor.
When budgeting for the next fiscal year the amounts spent in prior fiscal years should have NO influence. The budget should be constructed from a $0.00 base. Every dollar needs to be justified. Last year we spent $X on this therefore this year we need $X+ doesn’t cut it!
Dean,
It is even worse than you think. Way worse.
For but one example, the Koch Machine has not provided actual spending data since the mid 2010’s.
The only good news is this sort of koch and mirrors nonsense doesn’t fly with the DOR and thus the City of Quincy is typically among the very last municipalities in the Commonwealth to see its upcoming year property tax rates approved by the MA Department of Revenue (“DOR”) as well as that the C of Q is typically late seeing its yearend unspent “Free Cash” total certified by the DOR.
Specific case in point, this year’s C of Q Free Cash certification had to be redone because the Einsteins involved on City’s side of things basically forgot to include data that totaled up to a $9 million budget spending surplus in FY 2022, a koching-up that was only recently rectified and then certified by DOR.
From the PL “Koch said revenues for the city are up across the board . . . $31.5 million in new growth last year, a $10.1 million increase in state aid, and local receipts from sources such as building fees, the meals tax and excise taxes are exceeding projections.”
With the Koch regime it’s never enough.
Fredzo,
In fairness to Quincy’s peerless mayor, the passage you cited from the South Shore broadsheet is flawed. The cited $31.5 million in New Growth occurred over a handful of recent years, not last year as mistakenly noted by the broadsheet.
Accordingly, local property taxpayers should expect to be swived when Calendar Year 2024 local property tax rates are set in December.
The mayor is flawed.